Various types of machinery are subject to vibration that can loosen nuts and bolts. Safety wire has long been used as protection to resist such loosening. In such use, safety wire secures two or more parts together so that loosening of one part is counteracted by tightening of the wire. Typically, a single wire is passed through an aperture in a nut or bolt, the free ends twisted together up to another part, one of the ends inserted through an aperture in the another part and the ends again twisted. The standards for utilization of safety wire are critical and are set forth in Aerospace Standard AS567, entitled “General Practices for the Use of Lockwire, Key Washers and Cotter Pins,” available from the Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc., 400 Commonwealth Dr., Warrendale, Pa.
Safety wire or lockwire, as it is sometimes known, has several known problems. More recently, there has been developed an improved locking system using safety cable. Safety cable is a stranded cable having a termination on one end allowing the cable to be pulled to a predetermined tension through the aforementioned apertures in nuts and bolts. After tensioning, the free end of the cable must be terminated to hold the tension and cleanly severed to minimize any possibility of snags on loose wires. One such tool to perform this operation is commercially available under the trade name “Safe-T-Cable™” from the assignee of the current application, Daniels Manufacturing Corporation, and is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,345,663.
Safety cable is utilized on bolts and fasteners that are often located in cramped or minimally accessible locations. Accordingly, it is also desirable to provide a tool which is modular to provide interchangeable tool lengths and is reduced in size to access cramped locations. Further, in typical applications, the installation of safety wire involves a considerable amount of time and manual operation of a tool, resulting in operator fatigue. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a tool where the required hand force to operate the tool is reduced.